The Great Patriotic War in the cultural memory of residents of the Kaliningrad region: general trends and generational differences

Collective ideas about the past attract persistent interest of researchers. One of the important elements of the cultural memory of Russian society is the memory of the Great Patriotic War, which exists in the form of a national narrative and many variants, including regional ones. The purpose of the article is to identify a number of stable characteristics of the memory of the war inherent in the population of the Kaliningrad region – the westernmost region of the country, which appeared in its composition as a result of the Victory, as well as the specifics of its perception by representatives of different age groups. The empirical basis of the article was the materials collected during mass surveys and focus group studies in 2023-2024, aimed at studying the cultural memory of Kaliningraders. The analysis of the collected data allowed us to conclude that the memory of the Great Patriotic War is the main unifying story for all age groups of the region’s population. Events related to the war (the East Prussian operation, the storming of Koenigsberg in 1945) are perceived as the most important events in the past of the Kaliningrad land. At the same time, the youth are characterized by a weakening of the emotional connection with the memory of the war, its representatives noticeably less often highlight the Great Patriotic War and the Victory as cultural dominants, less often are interested in the fate of relatives who fought at the front. The all-Russian component of the memory of the war in the region prevails over the regional one. Perhaps this feature is connected with the specific situation in the territory of the region during the war years, when it was part of the German province of East Prussia.